July 12, 2010

Emails Brad Woodhouse, the Communications Director, the Democratic National Committee

They've apologized to the oil giant, accused the President of a shakedown, and called for deregulation of the oil and gas industry. It's as if they've forgotten that they have a responsibility to the people of the Gulf who've seen their lives and livelihoods upended by this tragedy.

If I were running against Joe Barton, I would certainly use Barton's words against him. The US should apologize to a foreign company? Really? But the Democratic site linked is lame -- just like attempts to link one or two Democratic statements to a blanket condemnation of the whole party are lame (Not thinking of a specific event, just a general statement).

I had to chuckle today, though. Some news story about how BP's latest techno fix -- that might work -- was running ahead of schedule -- after only -- what -- 85 days? BP really is doing a bad job of PR with this whole event.

Jeex I know I hate it when my electric goes out for even a few hours in a storm. The utility cmpanies and oil companies should consider a business strategy that includes regular service disruptions and supply shortages. Then Americans will stop whining about "big oil" and "big energy". I am not kidding. Jeez my cable & internet service costs me more than I pay to heat and light my frigging house.

When the cruise ship docked in St. Johns in Canada, we went for a walk. There was this little bookstore called "The Loyalist Bookstore" which was dedicated to keeping alive the spirit and honoring those who fled America.The guy running it was rabidly anti-american and proud of it. I looked at him and said; "AlphaLiberal? Downtownlad?...no wait Jeremy?"

No Alpha we don't hate you. We laugh at you. You are a one trick pony. The day I see you critize Obama for totally failing at making any legitimate attempt at cleaning up this mess is the day I don't think you are cartoon character.

They had this big stone monument to the loyalists who fled America in support of tryanny. They wanted to be ruled by a king. You know a melgomanic that no one could critize because they would be guilty of lèse majesté.

Its amazing how Republicans continue to run the world even though they're completely out of power. The Democrats control the House, the Senate and the Presidency and they are too incompetent to stop the evil supervillain Republicans.

Is this really the best Democrats can do for a spin of their astounding failures?

Alpha, you should just write your own blog and argue with yourself in the commments. In odd-numbered comments you'll ascribe fictional opinions to other commenters. In even numbered-comments you'll repeat liberal talking points. Your blog will have hundreds of comments, and all content-free.

BP should be prosecuted to fullest extent of the law for whatever they did. Any politican who accepted monies or campaign contributions from BP to overlook or change the laws should also be prosecuted.

Alpha - I don't think I said it was unAmerican to criticize oil companies. I inferred the Dems were piling on with their standard playbook of "profit is evil, corporations are evil, the deck is stacked against me, boo hoo hoo I am a weak, little American, won't some brave, heroic Dem politico save me".

Troop gets rich in the rag trade, goes on a fab Canadian cruise, brags about it and doesn't have the decency to bottle some of that cool Canadian air for distribution to the shvitzers back home. Republican!

And I wretch in disgust at the tricky manipulative antics of the Democratic National Committee.

I voted for Obama, you DNC assholes. You are doing a very good job of convincing me, and other independent folks like me, to never vote Democrat ever again.

Oh, one more thing, Democrats: Stuff like shows that your party deserves a thrashing at the polls this November-- just for the principle of it! I'll even hold my nose and vote Republican to help deliver it. The message needs to be sent to your party:

The outspoken Republicans have spoken to the Lawlessness of Obama The Great treating a business corporation as a mark for a shakedown the intentionally throws away the due process of law and thereby steals fees from gulf coast law firms with a politically appointed Panel of Socialised Lawyer rulers to go along with his Political Panel of Socialised Medical rulers.

Sure, that's why BP always contributed so much money to the GOP. All that Big Oil Money, well spent.

Oh sorry, my mistake. The top recipient of BP contributions over the last 20 years is: Obama.

But never mind, that's irrelevant, anyway, it's Republicans who are defending BP! Big Oil & the GOP, thick as thieves! After all, Obama didn't even bother calling BP's CEO for at least 2 months after the leak began. That sure is a sign of… um... surely, some saintly quality of Obama's, give me a second...

Critizing BP in this paticular case doesn't make you anti-american Alpha. It is just you anti-capitlist attitude that slams business and capitalism at every turn. You are perfectly right to critize BP. I don't care about them at all. It is your anti-capitalist rants and desire to turn this country into a Socialist Nanny state that makes you an anti-american. You have never said a positive thing about any business that I recall. You are a sock puppet for Democratic talking points, nothing more and nothing less. Devoid of a sense of humor and any true humanity.

I just think you are just like those proud anti-americans in St John in Canada. You hate the capitialistic system and want your hero Obama to destroy it so you can force everyone on the dole and tell everyone what to do because the Harvard elitists know so much better that regular apple pie Americans.

Quayle, the number of jobs destroyed is not the issue. It is obvious Obama has discovered the "new math" and and a new economic system. Don't forget to write to tell your Dem congress critter what color pony you would like.

Sadly, this is standard issue DNC fundraiser boilerplate. I'm registered Dem in a wealthy DC very blue suburb, and I see this sort of "the Repubs are evil, PURE EVIL" nonsense all the time. As to what answers the Dems have to make our lives better, well, who knows?

A call from the DNC to our household before the 2004 pres. election:

ME: (After hearing the spiel). "Well you've told me that if the repubs win, they're going to send the blacks and Jews to concentration camps. But, if you guys win, what do you plan to do for the country?"

DEM Guy: (Long pause). "You know, Mr YH, I agree with you, but I have to read the call as scripted. Would you like to talk to my supervisor?"

ME: "Sure..."

Supervisor then goes on to berate me for raising such questions, and denigrates performance of previous operator.

I thought this post was about how the Democrats are trying to divert attention from Obama's failures to blaming and destroying another segment of our economy.

But I didn't get the memo where it said we had to follow what the AlphaLiberals think we have to talk about.

To put it simply for even so limited a mind as AlphaLiberal, it is not critizing BP or Big Business or Small Business that is Anti-American. It is the mindset that mindlessly trashs the capitalistic system and the fact that "The Business of America is Business."

I'm not sure what George III has to do with socialism, but Adams sure disliked aristocracy. He supported a strong executive as a check on the power of the Senate because of his fear that the Senate would develop into a House of Lords.

As President Obama told us, the Federal Government has been in charge of the cleanup from day one. Accordingly, it's the Federal Government that has been doing a "lousy ass" job of cleaning up the mess, not BP.

Joe Barton said that any corporation that has committed an indictable offense should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law, but that no one should be treated the disgraceful way BP has been treated by this Administration.

Now, what the private negotiations with BP were, I do not know, but Obama certainly in his public statements made it appear to be a "shakedown."

As for regulations, this kind of thing is inevitable with any industry subject to extensive government regulation. It is not that there are too few regulations, but that there are too many. They accumulate over the years, some are prima facie physically impossible, some are mutually contradictory, some give different options for what to do about whatever the issue is, and so on. So, the inspectors and the industry types who work together every day get together and kind of decide which regulations to enforce and which to ignore. That's just human nature.It would be better to have fewer regulations, but clear and concise ones based on how the world actually works.

c3 wrote: "there you go, the policy of the Democratic Party is to take over the oil industry"

Disregarding the vile assault on the Constitution such a move would imply, and the general economic silliness it would entail, one practical upshot of such a nationalization would be the near impossibility of monetary damages being gained from government-owned oil industry.

This DNC thing is terrible! Ha ha! The RNC's harping on Obama golfing, by contrast, is the height of civic excellence.

Quoth Obama on May 10: I’m not going to rest or be satisfied until the leak is stopped at the source, the oil in the Gulf is contained and cleaned up, and the people in the Gulf are able to go back to their lives and their livelihoods."

For the record, I think the "parody" is perfectly legit, just stupid and probably counter-productive.

Using Obama's words and actions against him, though, is apparently racist by Obamabot standards. Obamabots should realize that (a) their standards are specious at best and (b) implying - or yelling - that such attacks are racist is losing a log of punch as a result. Oh, and (c): using Obama's words and actions against Democrats will work.

The conservative commenters here are so predictable. No matter what Obama would do, he is the bad guy. Had he sent in the coast guard on day one, dispatched multiple subs, and had the damn thing capped in a week, commenter here would complain BP should have been given the chance and that Obama was a big government overreactor.

Ralph L said... The liberal commenters who project their own inclinations onto the conservative commenters here are so predictable."

Oh creeps Ralph. The right wing on here is so over the top (or below the bottom perhaps) and march in such predictable lockstep..well it isn't predictability ...more being able to mouth the words to the sad little song because we hear it over and over.

Alpha wants everyone to forget The Zero had a year to do something about BP, but all he did was put a green energy guru in a position where someone who knew the oil business was needed. He has acted like Nero for 10 weeks and, for 2 months before the explosion, sat and did nothing when BP had warned the Feds there might be a problem.

Alpha also wants everyone to forget that those requirements to drill a mile out and a mile down come from the Democrat Party after being bought off by the enviro-nuts.

PS Something on the Loyalists for Troop. They comprised about 1 in 5 colonists (the Continentals about 1 in 3 at best). At war's end, about 90% stayed in the US and about 85% of those who went north came back a few years later, so what the Canucks are cheering, I'm not sure.

If you had forbears in the Colonies and they were from the Middle or Southern ones, there's a good chance they wore the green instead of the blue or the brown.

(Truth in advertising: my father's family comes from New York State, but I'm told I had a Continental ancestor.)

The guy in control of the government agency that gave Deepwater Horizon a SAFETY AWARD LAST YEAR!!!

Or maybe it was the guy who told us that expanding drilling offshore was ABSOLUTELY SAFE!!

Or maybe it was the guy who has accepted more donations from BP executives than ANY CANDIDATE IN HISTORY!!! And the guy that, given the chance to repudiate and/or return those donations, said thanks but no thanks - EVEN AFTER the spill!

Who could THAT GUY be?????

If you said Bush you must be AlphaLiberal....

If you said Obama, then you've been paying attention. Congratulations on a complete and utter debunking of every lie that AlphaLiberal has told about who is REALLY in the pocket of BIG OIL.

"The conservative commenters here are so predictable. No matter what Obama would do, he is the bad guy. Had he sent in the coast guard on day one, dispatched multiple subs, and had the damn thing capped in a week, commenter here would complain BP should have been given the chance and that Obama was a big government overreactor. "

LOL

You know what? You're making a claim that you can't POSSIBLY back up because Obama did NONE OF THOSE THINGS.

That you're here making excuses for Obama's pathetic response by trying to claim credit for something Obama NEVER EVEN CONTEMPLATED is a measure of just how bad things in ObamaLand have gotten.

Face it. Your Messiah screwed up. BIG TIME. You would do your own credibility a big favor by either: a) admitting it, or b) just shutting up before you dig the hole even deeper.

Had he sent in the coast guard on day one, dispatched multiple subs, and had the damn thing capped in a week, commenter here would complain BP should have been given the chance and that Obama was a big government overreactor.

Maybe you're right. Maybe we would still complain about Obama even if he responded to a crisis quickly and competently. That's food for thought, definitely.

I tell you what -- I'm willing to risk it. I'll take a chance on being wrong. All you have to do is arrange for Obama to actually respond to something quickly and competently, and then we can see how I react to it.

It is obviously too late for him to exhibit speedy competence with regard to the economy, health care, immigration, or the oil spill, but I'm sure another crisis will come along eventually.

There seems to be plenty of blame to go around, but the performance of the clean up has been abysmal, with the government seeming to trip over its own shoelaces at every turn.

I don't know enough about the technology of drilling to know whether BP was negligent, reckless or what, but I'd be in favor of strict liability for deep water drilling. There has to be some arrangement within the oil industry to improve the technology both for drilling and for quick remediation. It makes me wonder if the regulations and regulators didn't contribute to carelessness. My understanding is that blowouts are always a hazard of drilling for oil, but when you're doing this at 5000 feet down, they would seem to be an even more serious threat, and it doesn't look like BP was approaching it that way.

I don't think this is a legitimate partisan issue. This could just as easily have happened under Bush, and you know he would have been blamed no matter how well he did at getting skimmers and other clean up equipment to the site. That being the case, Obama hasn't been particularly impressive in his attention to getting this clean up going and making it work.

Whenever I'm grossed out by Democratic party antics and flubs, all I have to do to think of how Republicans are that much worse, and in most cases MUCH, MUCH worse.

Actually, MM, what you and the rest of the leftists here do is pretend that the Bush and the Republicans are still in charge (despite their being out of power for nearly 2 and 4 years, respectively), and you blame them for recent disasters and incompetency that the Democrats are wholly responsible for.

Oh, of course not. The Democrats will hold their heads high, campaigning on the success of the stimulus in bringing back the economy, affordable health care for all, saving GM and Chrysler, making progress toward instituting a cap and trade program to control dangerous greenhouse gases, appointment of two solid centrist middle-of-the-roaders as judges to counter the insanity of Thomas, Alito, et. al., eliminating threats to public education by extremist voucher advocates and greedy parents in Washington, D.C., ending partisan Washington games. Fingers crossed, they'll also be able to run on ensuring that all working families are represented by hard-working labor unions who will bargain solely in their interests. All the Republicans have to offer is a bunch of tea party lunatics yelling the n-word at their congressmembers.

The Democrats are going to do great. They can't wait to campaign on this record of accomplishment.

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Republicans not only helped to create this mess by deregulating the offshore drilling industry and gutting the regulatory agency in charge

Of course, a Democratic Congress for the past 4 years along with a Democratic president for the past year and a half, just couldn't figure out how to fix this. At least not while collecting the BP campaign contributions.

I did want to mention (other than mention the fact that Steele is less embarrassing but no one is going to get all up in arms about *this* because adults are held to higher standards) that as regulations go...

It was regulations, by and large, that prevented Obama from doing any of the obvious things to solve the problem of the oil in the Gulf. Not letting a ship sail without the proper life vests, not letting berms be built, not *letting* skimmers skim the oil out of the water because they weren't able to do it perfectly, not allowing certain ships to go from one US harbor to another US harbor, and on and on and on.

What was needed was for Obama to suspend regulations in a number of areas and stop all the numerous subordinate government agencies from interfering with the solution.

But maybe that would have weakened the "more regulations/Bush is evil" political benefit of it all, if the solution was to suspend regulations so that people could do their jobs.

Who decided the feds had the right to reduce greed. Who determines what defines greed in the first place. Do you really want Chris Dodd defining greed? or Charlie Rangel? or Nancy Pelosi defining greed. They are walking, talking exponents of greed in action. And Obama is yet another of the same.

While you are at it check who got the most contributions from Big Oil. Last I read it was a junior senator from Illinois named Barack Obama.